The National Email Benchmarking Report, covering Q2 of 2008 and produced by the Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) Email Marketing Council, reveals a significant widening of the gulf between the amount of retention and acquisition email marketing campaigns.
It also shows a slight increase in deliverability rates - up 1% from Q1 2008 to 95% for retention emails in Q2, while acquisition email deliverability rose from 83% to 89%.
During Q2 2008, retention campaigns accounted for 82% of all email campaigns, up from 76% in Q1 2008. The proportion of acquisition campaigns has fallen from 24% in Q1 2008 to just 18% in Q2 2008.
"Our research shows that marketers are refocusing their email efforts on their strongest-performing house lists and are moving their resources away from more speculative acquisition emails," said Richard Gibson, chairman of the DMA's Email Marketing Council.
Over the same period, contact frequency increased from an average of 4.21 consumer contacts per month to 5.44. The average number of emails sent per email service provider (ESP) per month declined 10% to 33,486,162.
However the report warns email marketers against "complacency" as there was a small rise of two percent in the hard bounce rates generated by acquisition emails compared to Q1, which ESPs attributed largely to addresses not existing.
"The good news is that it's likely that the email marketing sector will thrive in the recession," Gibson added. "Email is proven to be cost-effective and highly accountable, so it's likely that we'll see more investment in email marketing campaigns as marketers switch resources from costlier forms of advertising."
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